The Royal Opera’s current Carmen is a revival of a revival. It has something of the shop-worn about it: finely crafted but lacking in the glitz and edge and will to overwhelm that are needed for this opera.
      Carmen herself, the outstanding British mezzo-soprano, Christine Rice, is only half a Carmen; but as the half that one seldom hears this is not as disappointing as it sounds. She isn’t the siren whose charismatic, smouldering, impulsive sensuality deprives any man in her orbit of his last vestige of reason and self-control. Instead we see a more reflective, perceptive, nervy, resentful human being – one prey to the confusion and doubt and angst by which the standard Carmen seems improbably untouched, but that cannot be entirely absent from any human relationship.
      She is mirrored in these qualities and defects by her suitor, Don José, sung by Bryan Hymel, who is also under remarkable control for almost the entire opera. Indeed he seems rather fed up with this whole woman-schtick he has got himself into -- until he lets rip in the murder scene at the end, and very impressively too. Hymel’s tenor voice has an intriguing range: lyrical, heroic, throaty, soaring, mellow, cutting – it’s all there, and, in a role that demanded all these qualities, could be put to better use.
      The great revelation of the evening for this reviewer was the Latvian Maija Kovalevska, whose glorious soprano voice put one in mind of the Nordic legends of yesteryear – the Nilssons and Flagstads, if (so far) without their dramatic power. She is a singer to watch; a superb artist; a master of the perfect phrase; and a sophisticated actress who never let her role degenerate into the virtuous and slightly prissy loser that Micaela, as the spurned fiancée of Don José, can seem.
      The Greek baritone Aris Argiris cuts an impressive figure as Escamillo, the matador for whom Carmen abandons Don José, and he sustains a fine dramatic and melodic line.
      Constantinos Carydis conducts with finesse and clarity – again showing us the half of Carmen that one seldom hears, and again lacking in places the tautness and dramatic verve that it undoubtedly needs. Like his cast Carydis simmers rather than smoulders. And the orchestra, almost always on fine form these days, responded superbly to this newcomer’s baton.
Simon May